Sprint Planning to Pump $5 Billion into WiMax Network Over the Next 3 Years

Sprint is clearly not f’ng around when it comes to WiMax—sorry, Xohm—deployment, planning on spending up to $5 billion over the next three years to build the network’s infrastructure. While $5 billion is a huge wad, if their efforts to get Intel and PC makers to embed WiMax support into new notebooks succeed, they’ll have a massive built-in audience, making their target of $2-2.5 billion in revenue in 2010 definitely doable.

There’ll be a “soft launch” by year’s end in Chicago and Baltimore/Washington, D.C., with coverage of 100 million people (Sprint 70, Clearwire 30) by the end of 2008. Even though Sprint’s putting a lot of eggs into one basket with a dumb name, it’s one that promises a huge payoff if everything goes according to plan—and well, if we bite. [WSJ (login req'd) and Reuters]